BOSTON — That is what we do this for. Why we stay up late. Why we sweat and swear and spend and suffer and spend some more.

Because there's the possibility of that. The promise of that.

The pure, chest-rattling, forget-your-troubles joy of that moment. When Koji Uehara's final splitter settled in David Ross' mitt behind Matt Carpenter's flailing bat, and the brain registered what it meant, nothing else mattered.

Shane Victorino knew. A free agent this winter, his decision boiled down to two teams: Cleveland, offering four years and $44 million, or Boston, offering three years and $39M. The money was elsewhere. The security was elsewhere.

His concerns, ultimately, were elsewhere too.

"When I signed here, I knew what this was about," Victorino said before the game, hours before he'd stand on the field with his teammates wearing the disbelieving grin of the champion.

It is about Victorino's 5-for-37 conclusion to the 2013 season, and that ugly average disappearing from history. It is about the 2-1 Michael Wacha fastball he laced off the Monster being joined with his ALCS slam in highlight films destined for DVD shelves across New England.

It is about a year of being slammed with pitch after pitch ending with him slamming his chest, his roar from third base inaudible in a delirious Fenway.

It is about Ben Cherington building the next great Red Sox team out of nowhere. They've got the title to prove it.

“It's an amazing feeling. I feel blessed to be along for the ride,” Cherington said on the podium behind second base, enveloped in firework smoke filtering in from Lansdowne Street. “They decided in spring training they wanted to write a different story, and they did.”

It was a story that ended in Boston, capped with a 6-1 victory Wednesday that felt destined early, but sent hearts to throats when St. Louis had a swing at making it a one-run game in the seventh inning.

The bases were loaded for Allen Craig, who became simply the last big out gotten by Junichi Tazawa this October. St. Louis, record setters in the regular season for batting with men in scoring position, finished 1-for-9 on the night as Tazawa, Brandon Workman and Uehara finished the work begun by John Lackey.

Champions.

It wasn't 2004's cathartic release, won for those who came before as much for those legendary 25 men. It wasn't 2007's dynastic confirmation from the most expensive team in franchise history.

It was a bewildering, bearded reminder all its own, that sums can be greater than their parts, that a big-money roster can feel like an underdog, that there's nowhere better then Fenway Park when it is at its best.

It was a group assigned the task of winning us back that went ahead and won it all.

"Everybody cared about one another so much," Dustin Pedroia said,recalling those February days in Florida. "The whole ride all year, the stuff that happened to this city, we wanted to do something special. Make everybody happy and proud of their team in the toughest times. And we did."

Even better, these Sox suddenly feel on the cusp of perennial power again. The young talent is there, most evident in Xander Bogaerts. The books are cleared — just Lackey for more than $15 million next season, only three players under contract for even $12 million beyond 2014.

Time will tell how it develops. Even if we don't understand how or why or where it will all turn.

That might be the lasting lesson of this season, that it doesn't matter if we understand how the puzzle fits together.

All that matters is that moment.

The one you'll hear in your ears for as long as you watch this game.

The one that always brings you back.

Jon Couture covers the Red Sox for The Standard-Times. Contact him at jon.couture@bostonherald.com, or through 'Better Red Than Dead' at Blogs.SouthCoastToday.com/red-sox